I’ve never actually met George Packer, but I have read him, in the current issue of the Atlantic, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I can probably throw him farther than I can trust him. Yes, I am hip to old Georgie’s jive, right from the get-go—right from his “head”, as a matter of fact: A New Theory Of American Power.
Well, okay, what is this “new theory”? Well, “The United States can—and must—wield its power for good”, says the subhead. Well, in what fucking way is that “new”? Isn’t that the same subhead that Charlie Krauthammer used for every column he ever wrote? Huh?
George begins his column with a long sneer at those wide-eyed sissies/hippies/Nervous Nellies who believe in, you know, restraint. Chortles George, “With the withdrawal last year of the final troops from Kabul, restraint appeared to have won an uncontested victory. It lasted six months.”
Yeah, pussies. I’m so sorry Vladimir Putin busted your cherries. Yeah. Sorry. Not sorry!
But, wouldn’t you know it; even when Vladimir Putin wantonly invades a harmless neighbor, “restrainers found ways to place the blame on the U.S.,” though, naturally, Packer doesn’t address the real reasons why the U.S. does deserve ultimate blame for the invasion, even though the general policy of the Biden administration of supporting Ukraine is correct and admirable—though Biden doesn’t seem to realize that he’s asking our European allies to shoulder all the costs associated with that support while the U.S. is profiting, from their pain!.
Packer assures us that NATO “never seriously consider[ed] Ukrainian membership”, which is either misinformation, disinformation, dissimulation, or disengenuation, or, well, all of the above. In April of 2008, President Bush met with then Ukraine president Viktor Yushchenko and announced afterwards that he favored NATO membership for both Ukraine and Georgia and said that Russia would not be allowed to “veto” the nations’ joining of the pact. For decades, the U.S. has supported a “forward” policy in eastern Europe, constantly seeking to undermine Russian influence. Nothing is more obvious than that many leading figures in the U.S. military intellectual complex—Hillary Clinton, for example—dreamed of “freeing” Russia—from Vladimir Putin. After all, if America “must” wield its power for “good”, then don’t we have a duty to get rid of Vladimir? Because we can all agree that the guy is terrible, can’t we? I sure think so!
George packs so many sleazy rhetorical tricks into his “analysis” that, frankly, I’m beginning to gag just from the task of cataloguing them all, so I’m going to cut my gut some slack and cut this short. But I’ve got to leave room for at least one more. Early in his trashing of “restraint”, George engages in a bit of guilt by association, listing a few of the strange bedfellows that restraint (that is to say, cowardice) has given us: “Noam Chomsky recently praised the statesmanship of Donald Trump.” Okay, I disagree with both Noam and Donald about 99.9% of the time, but if Noam praised Donald, which he probably did, for not willfully invading a non-threatening country for “good”, overturning the lives of millions of people and causing tens of thousands of deaths, unlike his two predecessors, well, I say “Good for Noam, and good for Donald”! And bad for George, for later endorsing one of Trump’s very worst actions, withdrawing from the nuclear agreement that President Obama had reached with Iran! Keepin’ it classy, George! Keepin’ it classy!
What’s “amusing” amid all this rhetorical slight of hand is that George, when he finally gets down to telling us what we should do, gets all cautious on our asses, tells us not to get carried away, and warns against “sending troops to fight and die for democratic illusions in inhospitable countries”—almost as if he were agreeing with Noam and Donnie! And me!
“This recognition of limits would make a foreign policy founded on liberal values more persuasive abroad and more sustainable with the American electorate, holding off the next oscillation toward grandiosity or gloom.”
Yeah. So how would that differ from a policy of “restraint”?
